galleon off Guam

Australians seek silver galleon off Guam

By David North

Ml SOUTH Australian syndicate has won the exclusive right to excavate a silver-laden Manila galleon sunk off Guam in 1690. The group, headed by John Bent and Paul Lunn, co-owners of the Adelaide Skin diving Centre, and backed by Austra

lian businessman Anthony O’Grady,

estimates there could be as much as SUSSOO million in precious metal and gems at the wreck site of the Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Zaragoza.

The 1200-ton vessel, mounting 50 cannon, was transporting the Royal Situardo, the King’s annual allowance to underwrite a year’s trading in Man ila, including 1.5 million silver ‘pieces of eight’ as well as an unknown amount of gold coins and ingots.

The project, licensed to do business as Davey Jones Archaeology in the US

territory of Guam, places a heavy

emphasis on the proper recovery of the vessel’s historical treasure. “This is not a plundering mission,” says Lunn.

This will be a thorough archaeolo gical survey and recovery exercise to present to the world for the first time not only the wealth of the vessel but priceless antiquities, and return to Guam its historic heritage.”

The group has already invested “a small fortune” over the past five years

conducting historical research in

Spain, the United States, the Philip pines and Guam, mounting several ex ploratory dives on the del Pilar site and fighting a drawn-out but ultimate ly successful court battle with Amer ican treasure hunter and marine archaeologist Robert Marx over ex

cavation rights.

Now that US courts have sanctioned Guam’s right to enter an exclusive agreement with Davey Jones, the terms of the pact will grant the Gov ernment of Guam 25 per cent of the recovered items as well as an option to negotiate on any particular item of historical or commercial interest.

Davey Jones, which will finance the effort and carry it out under elaborate archaeological recovery rules, is enti tled to 75 per cent.

The excavation team has its work cut out: the galleon slid down a reef face after grounding near Cocos Is land, a spur of coral and sand spits jutting out from Guam’s southwestern coast. With a crew of 300 and another 200 passengers, the overloaded and

ungainly ship built for cargo capacity

and defensive strength was difficult to manoeuvre in the best of conditions.

Ending the tiring two-month, 7500nautical-mile crossing from Acapulco, the vessel (the largest commercial ship of its era) was attempting to skirt Cocos and make the galleon port of Umatac some distance further along the west coast, but the winds were light and variable, the current was

running inshore and night was falling

when the del Pilar struck at Bpm on June 2, 1690.

Despite attempts to lighten the ves sel and row her off the reef, the be hemoth would not budge and when the wind began picking up the del Pi lar's passengers and much of its cargo were transferred by boats to its sister ship, the Santo Nino, which continued on to Manila the next day, anxious to cross the Philippine Sea before the typhoon season struck in its full

ferocity.

All the next day the del Pilar was blown across the boulder-strewn reef and sucked down the steeply sloping face, breaking up and spilling its re maining cargo along the way. Contem porary reports indicate that much of the treasure slid beneath the reach of breath-holding native divers, and now lies strewn across several square kilometres of sloping sand-bottom and perhaps on shelves as deep as 100 metres. Heavier sections of the vessel are believed to have slid below that level.

Robert Marx, who was Davey Jones’

chief competitor for salvage rights,

had listed the del Pilar as one of the 10 richest unsalvaged ships in the world. Davey Jones’ own estimates place the bullion value of the 1.5 mil lion silver coins (about 47 tonnes of silver) at SUSI 3 million, but collectors’ condition Spanish coins of the era fetch up to |250 each.

The ship’s manifest only hints at the true value of the cargo, as has been demonstrated in the recovery of Span ish galleon treasure in the Caribbean.

The Manila galleon trade w'as con

stantly and severely restricted by Royal

decrees limiting the amount of bullion that could be allocated to the Asian trade: Acapulco and Manila traders circumvented the decrees by simply

not listing and/or by undervaluing

their actual bullion and cargo on offi cial manifests.

Historians estimate the galleons annually carried $2 to $5 million in Royal Situardo as well as the personal wealth of the merchants, noble sons, soldiers and adventurers who took

passage on them to Spain’s colonial outposts. While treasure recovery of Spanish galleons in the Caribbean has a track record of high return on in vestment, there are few cases of suc cessful recovery on the Pacific side of

Spain’s trading empire. But the recent

recovery of hundreds of gold artifacts from another Manila galleon off Saipan in the Northern Marianas has heightened interest and faith in the search for the del Pilar.

A Singapore-based marine construc tion firm, Pacific Sea Resources Inc, used a high-tech recovery ship and trained crews to bring up hundreds of

gold articles, including coins, jewellery

and plate from the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, wrecked off Saipan in 1638. The recovery also included dozens of clay storage jars, hundreds of cannon balls and ballast stones as well as a few anchors.

The del Pilar historical treasure could include ornately decorated bronze and iron cannon, ceramics and stoneware as well as metal tools and implements of everyday use. Intri gumgly, Lunn believes some of the ships timbers may still be intact. Parts of the vessel could have survived either by sliding below the habitat of the wood-eating teredo worm or by being buried under tonnes of sana.

One of about 80 Manila galleons built in the 350-year history of the Spanish colonial shipping line, the del Pilar was 52 metres (170 feet) long, with a 15 metre beam and masts rising almost 40 metres above the water. She was constructed (by a thousand work men) entirely of Philippine hardwoods and christened in 1653. Her keel and ribs were mahogany, her decking teak and hull planking lanang-which was re puted to be impervious to cannon shot.

Whatever artifacts and treasure are re covered could help write a better ver sion of this important early chapter in Pacific island interaction with the West. As Lunn said in describing the goals of the team: “We believe our project to excavate this important Manila galleon will help lift world rec ognition of this aspect of Pacific his- Manila galleon was a repre sentative of the first trans-Pacific European trading line which lost at least |US6O million treasure in ship wrecks during the 350 years the route was used, a fraction of the fantastic wealth it carried from South America to the Philippines. □